


Legend

by Barb Cummings (Rahirah)



Series: The Barbverse [111]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-02
Updated: 2012-06-02
Packaged: 2017-11-06 16:06:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/420764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rahirah/pseuds/Barb%20Cummings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Old legends may fade and die, but new ones are born all the time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legend

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place in the same universe as _A Raising In the Sun_ et al., and contains spoilers for previous works in the series.

Spike. He's a legend: William the Bloody, Slayer of Slayers, one fourth of the Scourge of Europe. He's an icon: bleached hair, black leather, and attitude. He's a rebel: the vampire who fights his own kind for the sake of a Slayer's love. He's everything you thought a vampire should be, back when you lived and breathed, everything you found most vampires weren't once you ditched the pulse. 

Vampires are evil, yeah, but not rock-star evil, not like Spike. Just bland, boring, everyday, ordinary evil. Sneaking around in the shadows, terrorizing the rats and burbling on about the return of the Old Ones. Half the time you don't even get to kill anyone, because your sire says you've got to lay low, can't draw attention, the mortals aren't as stupid as you think they are. You don't want to lay low. You want to blaze a fiery trail of destruction across history. Death or glory, right? So the first thing you do when your sire kicks you out after one too many incautious kills is hunt Spike down. 

You almost don't recognize him when you find him, one blustery February afternoon in Sunnydale, California. He's pacing up and down the length of a soccer pitch at Richard Wilkins Senior Elementary School with a cigarette dangling from his lips and a leather jacket hitched over his head, braving the last rays of the setting sun to yell incomprehensible advice about the off-side rule to a gaggle of shrieking girls chasing the black-and-white ball around the field. The bleached hair is a graying brown now, ruffled into undignified curls by the wind, and the washboard abs are padded by a slight paunch. 

Spike looks… ordinary. 

You knew about the Mohra blood, of course – it's part of the Legend of Spike, how he became the world's first mortal vampire. But somehow you never put the pieces together, never figured out that maybe the vampire you're searching for doesn't exist any longer. Rebels aren't supposed to become soccer dads. Icons aren't supposed to tarnish. Legends aren't supposed to get old.

Maybe you should thank him, because you thought you were beyond feeling such petty human emotions as betrayal. It floods through you hot and bitter now, and you stride forward, fangs descending. You've been practicing along the way. Making yourself worthy. You just didn't realize for what until now. Old legends may fade and die, but new ones are born all the time.

He senses your approach and turns, almost lazily, shrugging back into his jacket as the last rays of the sun disappear beyond the prosaic suburban horizon. Stubs out his cigarette on the sole of his boot. Out on the field the girls tumble to a halt, watching with innocent curiosity – they won't be so innocent after you're done with them, but first things first. You meet his eyes, your own going yellow as the demon's visage dispels your human mask, and leap. 

It's not that he's faster than you are. It's not even that he's that much stronger. He's just better. He's been in a hundred fights to every one of yours, and at vampire speed it's five seconds flat before you're slammed to your back on the grass with two broken arms and Spike's knee in your belly. He doesn't even bother to switch into game face. 

"Someone, someday, mate," he says, almost congenial. "But not you, and not today."

The girls are running across the field towards you now, the fair-haired one in the lead yelling, "Daddy!" as she tears off the UV-resistant ski mask she's wearing to reveal eyes as golden and fangs as sharp as your own.

"S'all right, Peanut," Spike says. "Put the lumpies away, he's not going anywhere. Here, you lot, stop gawking and get back to work. Your breakaways look like your grandmum playing shuffleboard." 

The girls pout and shuffle back out onto the field, loudly bemoaning the lack of fun in their lives. "You'd think they'd never seen a vamp dust before," Spike grumbles, and then, "Lucky for you, I'm in a good mood. Anything to say for yourself before I kill you?"

There's really only one answer to that. You look Spike in the eye, and with all the insolence you can summon up, "Fuck you, old man."

Spike grins. "That's the Slayer's job." Cold hands grasp your jaw, strong arms twist, and the bones of your neck snap crackle pop, shearing through your spinal cord. And as your body falls to dust, your last thought is triumph.

One way or another, you're part of a legend now.

END.


End file.
